Whenever I do a major book launch I have countless individuals who love how I market the book and give me (and those involved) great feedback. Then there are those who don’t like my methods of marketing at all and have no qualms about how they tell me this. In some cases, they are downright vicious.
Over the years I have learned to separate the valid from the “crazy” feedback. For the sake of comparison, I am going to compare book launch feedback to platform speaking feedback.
I began my professional speaking career nearly 17 years ago. From the first time I stepped on the platform I was “home”. I loved (and still love) motivating audience members, sharing great information that improves someones personal and/or professional life and knowing this is what I am meant to do. This is definitely part of my life’s work.
Being evaluated by audience members was a standard practice with one company I contracted with. At the time I contracted with SkillPath there were over one hundred other trainers.
Although I was consistently at the very top of the top of the evaluations, every so often there was someone who gave feedback that ripped into my heart. 

Occasionally there was someone who took it upon themselves to evaluate me at a level in which you would have thought I had never presented before or didn’t know how to dress. They would hold nothing back in telling me how poor my presentation skills were, how ugly my earrings were, my hairstyle was or how awful my suit looked. Although I presented extremely well, wore very nice suits, had my hair styled on a regular basis and wore simple gold earrings, this didn’t matter; they had their opinion and by gosh, they were going to share it and mince no words in the process.
In the beginning of my professional speaking career this kind of feedback devastated me. I could have presented to a room of 100 people with 99 giving me top marks and one person indicating I was the worst speaker they had ever heard.
As human nature would have it, rather than focus on the 99 who loved my information and the way it was presented, I would worry about what I could have done to have the one mean-spirited person like me. Maybe if I said one thing differently, wore something else, been a little nicer to them, or whatever they would have rated me higher.
Whoa! Big mistake. To base my choices on one percent of the room is not in the best interest of the other 99%.
Granted, if the numbers were reversed this is an issue and something to worry about. But truth be told, we will not please everyone. No matter who we are, how good our information is, or how careful we are not to offend others we are going to. To think otherwise is not realistic.
So how does this compare with a book launch? Well, book launches are viewed by thousands upon thousands of people; some who appreciate good marketing and others who don’t.
A successful book launch does require very proactive marketing. Marketing that to some seems manipulative at best. The fact is, marketing is something many people don’t understand. When done right, there is a lot of strategy, time and effort involved.
Recently I completed a very, very successful book launch. Buyers were very happy with the book and based on the amazing feedback from lots of people the way the book was marketed.
Yet, there were a couple of people who thought that having to market the book as we did was not true marketing. Ouch!
Yes, when I look at how many of this particular book has already sold, the rankings the book received on the largest on-line bookstore in the world (#1 in four fabulous categories) and the continued great feedback about the book readers are giving I take the couple of negative comments with a grain of salt.
If the numbers were turned and two people liked the launch and thousands of others didn’t I would be concerned.But that is not the case. The campaign was hugely successful specifically due to a fabulous book, incredible contributing authors and an amazing marketing campaign.
The fact is, no matter what you do, there will be those who love it and those who don’t. No getting around this.
Here’s another great example of how different opinions can be. Several years ago my book, The Law of Achievement was published. Several thousand copies sold in a very short period of time. The book hit incredible position on Amazon and the feedback from men and women around the globe was fantastic.
Not so with one person in Southern California. Not only did this person not like the book (at all!) he went as far as to make notes throughout his copy of the book in red to point out how bad my writing is and how dumb the message of the book was. (His words, not mine).
I remember going from page to page wondering why someone would spend hours doing what he did. How do I know he spent hours doing this? Because to purchase the book, read the book, highlight what he felt was wrong, package the book to send it back to me had to take hours.
What an incredible waste of time on his part. I had to wonder what he could have accomplished  had he put that time and energy into his own writing. (yep, he told me he is an aspiring author)
So back to book marketing. The fact is, many authors, or wanna be authors, hesitate to market. They somehow think a book is going to sell itself. Sure, every so often a book seems to take on a life of its own and go from total obscurity to overnight success with no effort, but I can assure you there was likely a lot of marketing behind those books that seem to “fly off the shelf”.
The reality is, books need to be marketed. And, marketed in a very strategic way. Simple as that.
If you are an author who knows the message in your book(s) will make a difference in the lives of readers are you going to let your fear of what one or two people say determine who finds out about your book? I hope not.The best thing you can do is learn to market and market well, often and proudly.
My wish for you is that you are so proud of what you write you would be willing to stand on the mountain top to let people know about your book.
Hmmm, standing on a mountain top. Now that seems like a fun marketing idea. Gotta go. Heading out to the mountain.